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“Why haven’t you asked about Michael?” You blurt out, sitting on the pier with Bucky a few days later. You were watching the ocean and enjoying the cool evening, but your mind was whirling. Bucky hadn’t said anything else after the incident at the sushi bar, and it was eating at you. You knew he had to be wondering, you would have been wondering if someone randomly tried to attack Bucky. So why wasn’t he asking you about it? Why was he acting like it didn’t matter? You didn’t understand.
Bucky, for his part, simply shrugs his shoulders, his expression neutral as he turns to look at you. “I figured you’d tell me when you’re ready,” his voice is calming, and it grates your nerves. Why was he so fucking perfect?
“You’re not even a little curious?” You press. You aren’t sure if you want a reaction out of him, but the nonplussed way he’s been acting about it has you on edge. It’s the exact opposite of what you expect, and that sets off alarms in your head.
Bucky tilts his head, looking at you curiously for a moment before he answers you. “Of course I’m curious, doll. I’ve got some… ideas about who he is, but I know you’ll tell me when you’re ready. Until then, he’s gone and I don’t see any reason to worry.”
Anyone else - literally anyone - would have hounded you for answers. They would have wanted to know why someone you hadn’t seen in eight fucking years could affect you the way Michael did. They would want to know who he was, who he was to you personally, what happened, what went down, why his wife was accusing you of getting him fired and trying to attack you.
But not Bucky.
No, Bucky is irritatingly perfect and hasn’t brought it up at all. Like he doesn’t care.
Oh.
Oh.
“Do you… care about what happened?” You ask quietly, glancing at him before ducking your head. That would be what makes sense. He just didn’t care. And you aren’t sure if that means he doesn’t care about you, or about Michael. About your past, or about your future together. Do you have a future together? If he didn’t care, then does he not want to keep you around?
You feel your anxiety rising, slowly at first, until your thoughts quickly spiral out of control and you start rocking yourself back and forth, breathing deeply and staring at nothing in particular as your panic rises and takes over you completely.
“Hey! Hey, hey, hey, look at me. Look at me, Y/N. Come on, come back here,” Bucky has moved to kneel in front of you, grabbing your hands in one of his and his other on your cheek, coaxing you to look at him. Which you do, slowly. “That’s it. I’m right here, doll. Talk to me, what’s going on? What’s going through that head of yours?”
Taking a long, slow, breath, you squeeze his hand tightly as you close your eyes for a moment. “Do you not care? Is that why you haven’t asked? Because you don’t care about - about me? Or -”
“ No. ” Bucky’s firm, commanding voice penetrates your panic. It’s something you can grab onto. “No, of course I care about you, doll. I wasn’t pressing because I care about you. Because you were shaken up, clearly, and I didn’t want to make you more uncomfortable by demanding answers.” He strokes your cheek with his thumb and brushes away a stray tear. “Would it make you feel better to tell me?”
Yes. You think, leaning into his hand on your cheek as your heart slows. “I - y-yeah. Yeah, it would.” you finally admit, opening your eyes and staring into Bucky’s deep blue orbs. “If that’s… alright.”
“More than alright,” Bucky smiles at you. “So who was Michael?”
You squeeze his hand lightly, reminding you that he was there. He was listening. He cared .
“We dated in high school.” You start, shifting on your seat and motioning for Bucky to sit back down next to you. “He was my first everything. First boyfriend, first kiss, first date… the whole nine yards.” You lean your head against his shoulder as he sits down next to you. Breathing in deeply, you hum as you feel yourself relax again. “I thought we were gonna get married. I really loved him, ya know? Yeah, I was 16 and young and dumb, but I really thought we would be that couple. He even proposed.”
Well, it was less of a proposal and more a "given." You and Michael would discuss your wedding, your plans, where you would live and how many kids you were going to have. But there was never a formal proposal as such.
“We dated for three years. The last two years of high school and the first year of college. And he cheated on me the entire time with that bitch he has as his wife now.” You make a face. “The jackass even had the balls to joke about how his family thought he was cheating on me with her. To my face. We were sitting in his room and he was telling me about going over to her place and he said, ‘Ya, my dad thinks I’m cheating on you!’ and I remember laughing, like it was a ridiculous proposal. Like, if he had cheated on me, he wouldn’t be telling me about their date!” you scoff. “Fuck I was stupid.”
“No, you were trusting,” Bucky says softly, rubbing your shoulder comfortingly.
“Same thing,” you mutter under your breath. “But yeah… he was just.. A dick. And for the longest time I thought he was just that - a dick. Like I dated a jerk. But a few years after he broke up with me, I was talking to a therapist about our relationship and she had to stop me and be like ‘you know that’s abuse, right? Like, those are all classic signs of emotional abuse.’ And I just… I couldn’t accept that. I wasn’t abused! I mean, yeah, he had smacked me a couple of times, but I had hit him back. And when he smacked me at prom, I fuckin’ left his ass there with no way home.”
“He hit you?!” Bucky frowns, pulling back away from you. “He hit you!?” His blue eyes quickly picked up a storm, anger burning in him. You grab his hand and shake your head to try and calm him.
“Just a couple of times. But like I said - I hit him back! I wasn’t going to take physical abuse from anyone, especially not someone whose arm I could snap in half just by looking at it. He was such a skinny scrawny little shithead as a teenager. And I hit him with my car once. He did that to himself, though. It was after he hit me because I accused him of only using me for sex-”
Bucky pulls away from you then, staring at you like you had grown a second head, anger burning in his eyes. “He did what!?”
“Buck -”
“Why did you date this guy!?”
“I ask myself that a lot…” You mutter.
“Doll,” Bucky reaches out and grabs your hand. “You don’t - you know you don’t need to tell me -”
“I want to. You should know, anyway… I mean, it explains a lot, ya know? Heh… trauma’s fun, ain’t it? Can’t even have one personality trait that isn’t a trauma response or coping mechanism.” you give him a wry smile.
Bucky hums, sitting back down and nods to himself. “Yeah, tell me about it.”
You grab his hand again and settle into his side, playing with the glove that he wore over his metal hand.
“But yeah, I was feeling like he was just using me for sex, told him that, he blew up and yelled that if I ever told anyone that I’d regret it, smacked me across the face and I stormed out of his parent’s house. I was putting my car in drive when he jumped into the street to stop me from leaving and I was already pressing on the gas. He bounced off the corner of my car, hit my side mirror, and stood there staring at me while I drove away. I was so pissed. And the dumb fucking part is that I still hate telling this story, because part of me is like ‘maybe he really wasn’t and he wasn’t abusive and you’re blowing this out of proportion and it’s going to get back to him and he’s going to be pissed that you told people he was abusive and he’s going to hurt you.'"
You look at Bucky.
“That’s how bad it got. I gaslit myself into thinking he wasn’t gaslighting me and abusing me. It got so bad that I still fear his anger. What the hell is wrong with me?”
“Nothing,” Bucky says, wrapping his arm around you again and pulling you close to him. “Absolutely nothing. You are perfect. He’s the one who’s wrong.”
You sniffle a little, your eyes stinging with unshed tears at Bucky’s soft voice. You hated crying. Especially in front of someone who has so many reasons to cry and is so much stronger than you. “I mean, it’s nothing like what you went through -”
“Don’t you even start that.” Bucky growles. “You can’t compare trauma, you
know
that. You tell me that every fucking day.”
You did. He would feel bad for being upset over something, and you’d remind him that he can’t compare trauma, that he went through hell and has every reason to feel the way he feels, and that he should let himself feel his emotions. But for some reason, you can’t take your own advice.
“He would start arguments with me over the phone. Fights he knew I wouldn’t be able to back down from, and then put his phone on speaker, go to wherever his family was, and just stand there while I was yelling at him over the phone, looking like he didn’t know what I was yelling at him for… He always made me look like the bad guy.. And for so long I thought I was.”
“That’s fucked up…” you hear Bucky mutter.
“Tell me about it… I didn’t know he did that until after we were over and one of his friends told me. His friends actually ditched him after he ended it with me. They weren’t the biggest fan of me, but they hated what he did to me more. So they were like ‘fuck you, bitch’ and stopped hanging out with him and everything.”
“Good.”
You smile a little. “He was really good with technology. He wanted to work as a computer engineer for his favorite video game company. But he was never very good with math, and when I would try to help him, he would just blow up on me and yell at me. So when he messaged me at work one day a few years ago, I fucking panicked. Out of the blue, he sent me an IM saying that my computer needed updates and upgrades and he was going to be working on that, and that it wouldn’t take long. I thought it was weird, because usually when your station needs updates, they email you and tell you what it is, how to do it, and if you have problems to reach out. But what really freaked me out was that it was him . So I told my manager, and she told me not to respond. They got security involved, had his boss look into it, and he had absolutely no reason to reach out to me. My station was up to date and everything. When they told me that, I freaked out even more. What if he had my address then? What if he stalked me? What was I going to do?”
You shift, closing your eyes as you focus on not letting those emotions take you over.
“I was so scared… They asked if I wanted them to do anything. Because they could easily have him fired for that. But … I was afraid of any kind of retaliation. Like I said - I didn’t know if he had my address now, or if he knew how to find me. So I told them I didn’t want to do that. I just never wanted him to contact me again.”
“But they fired him anyway?” Bucky asks, frowning. You knew what he was thinking.
“He must have done something else. Because they promised me they wouldn’t do anything for that reason. I never heard from him again after that IM. So I don’t know what happened.”
“When was that?”
“Back when I lived in Illinois. So about two years ago?”
“So he doesn’t know you moved? That’s why you said you were on vacation?”
Nodding, you look up at him and hum. “Damn straight. I don’t need a stalker or you going to jail for murder. So don’t go looking for him, please.”
“I won’t.” Bucky promises, though he still looks like he wants to crack some heads.
“But, uh… yeah. That’s most of it…”
“You mentioned you were cheated on twice…?” Bucky makes a face. “Was your other ex just as bad?”
You hum, scrunching your face up. “Eh… he was… he was bad in a similar way… but different…?” You frown, trying to figure out how to explain it. Michael was the one you feared. Andrew was the one you were angry at.
“What do you mean?”
Sighing, you glance up at the stars, finding the words. “Andrew… he, uh… well, ok, so this might explain it best - whenever we were arguing over something, he made it a point not for him to be right, but to make sure I was wrong . He even admitted it. He didn’t care if he was right as long as he could prove me wrong. He was, like, nine years older than me, disbled Marine vet - that should say a lot. He wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box. But I dated him before the joke about Marines eating crayons, but oh my lord I could see him eating crayons,” you roll your eyes. “He was more emotionally abusive. He never raised his hand to me ever, well…” you chuckle, looking away from Bucky. “Except in bed. Probably why I stayed with him for so long. The sex was … fuck, the sex was good.”
“Seriously?” Bucky raises an eyebrow.
“Don’t look at me like that! If you’d never been able to orgasm before and suddenly you're getting multiple in a single session? You’d stay with him too!”
“You’d never orgasmed before him?” he asks, incredulous.
“Never. And haven’t since," you sigh.
“But it is what it is. He could be so sweet. He bought me this adorable little penguin statue because he knew I loved penguins. But then he would go to Washington state for two weeks and not tell me until he came back.”
You look perplexed. “Like.. he gave me whiplash. And then he just stopped talking to me. You know your relationship is over when you can watch 16 seasons of Law and Order SVU waiting for him to call you back. I had to break up with him via text because he wouldn’t give me the time of day. Then after that, I learned he had been telling other women that we were in an open relationship! I had never agreed to that. So he was seeing, like, eight other women behind my back. He even married the one and last I heard has a kid with her. The dumbest part of that is she was the one I was most worried about him cheating on me with, and she was the one he swore he would never date because she was ‘too much like him’ and it would be like dating his twin." You roll your eyes. “Again, I was young and fucking stupid.”
“Please stop saying that. You aren’t stupid. You were trusting.”
“Again I say, the same fucking thing.”
“You trust me, don’t you?” Bucky counters.
You make a face, scrunching your nose. “Against my better judgment, yes. I do.”
“Thanks?”
You chuckle. “Yeah, well, now you know. Now you know why I didn’t wanna date again. And why I… freaked out so bad…”
Bucky surprises you by pulling you into his lap. “Thank you for telling me.” he says, kissing you softly on the lips. “Do you feel better?”
You nod, wrapping your arms around his shoulders. “Yeah… I do… Thanks for listening.”
“Anytime, doll. And not all vets are like that.”
The laugh that bubbles up out of your throat catches you by surprise and you bury your face in his neck, laughing. “Oh, Buck. I know. You’re nothing like Andrew.” You smile, kissing his neck. “How are you so perfect?”
Bucky’s snort shakes you a little. “I’m far from perfect, sweetheart.”
“You’re perfect to me.”
~*~Fin~*~